Research Network Imagining the Impossible: The Fantastic as Media Entertainment and Play

  • Schubart, Rikke (Head coordinator)
  • wille, jakob ion (CoI)
  • Bruun Vaage, Margrethe (CoI)
  • Ndalianis, Angela (CoI)
  • Albertsen, Anita Nell Bech (CoI)
  • Iversen, Sara Mosberg (Head coordinator)
  • Clasen, Mathias (CoI)
  • Andersen, Marc Malmdorf (CoI)
  • Bacchilega, Cristina (CoI)
  • juul, jesper (CoI)
  • Howell, Amanda (CoI)
  • Green, Stephanie (CoI)
  • Joyce, Stephen (CoI)

Project: Research

Project Details

Description

This network joins 13 researchers working with media fictions (television, film, computer games, literature), human play (real and virtual, children and adults), and production design in games and films. We are funded by IRFD, Independent Research Fund Denmark. We join theories from the humanities with biocultural, evolutionary, and cognitive theories of play. We view fantastic fiction as offering imaginary play and cognitive meta-thinking, so-called “what-if” thinking. The network asks why the fantastic has exploded in contemporary entertainment, how and why we play with – create, design, use, engage with – the fantastic, and why the fantastic is adaptive and important for human existence. Researchers come from three Danish universities and four international universities. The network produces an interdisciplinary theory of the fantastic and will write a large project application.

Key findings

network activities; a Grand Theory of the Fantastic; a new application in the transmedia fantastic; a new double-blind, open access, peer-reviewed research journal; an international conference on the fantastic Spring 2020

Layman's description

This network joins 13 researchers working with media fictions (television, film, computer games, literature), human play (real and virtual, children and adults), and production design in games and films. We join theories from the humanities with biocultural, evolutionary, and cognitive theories of play. We view fantastic fiction as offering imaginary play and cognitive meta-thinking, so-called “what-if” thinking. The network asks why the fantastic has exploded in contemporary entertainment, how and why we play with – create, design, use, engage with – the fantastic, and why the fantastic is adaptive and important for human existence. Researchers come from three Danish universities and four international universities. The network produces an interdisciplinary theory of the fantastic and will write a large project application.
Short titleImagining the Impossible
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01/10/201801/10/2021

Collaborative partners

  • Designskolen (Project partner)
  • Aarhus University (Project partner)
  • Swinburne University of Technology (Project partner)
  • University of Kent (Project partner)
  • University of Hawaii (Project partner)
  • Griffith University (Project partner)
  • (lead)

Keywords

  • the fantastic
  • science fiction
  • horror
  • supernatural
  • fantasy
  • media entertainment
  • transmedia
  • theory of the fantastic
  • fairy tale

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